OPI 4A - Allwinner T527

[AurealNix]

@L. Jorge Soares  Thanks a lot for testing both — genuinely, this is the most useful thing anyone can do for the project. 🙏

CLI: great to hear it boots and HDMI works on your setup — that's the first confirmation from hardware other than mine, so it means a lot. If you get time, I'd love to hear how it holds up (networking, USB, and the 4 GB variant if that's what you have).

Root password: that's by design, not a bug. Root login is locked on purpose — the image ships with a default user / user account and SSH enabled, so an open root account would be a security hole. Use the user account with sudo:

• root shell: sudo -i (or sudo su)
• to set a root password if you really want one: sudo passwd root

KDE image + Etcher error: let's pin it down. Full disclosure — I flash with dd myself, so I haven't actually run these images through BalenaEtcher; I'll test the Etcher path on my end to try to reproduce it. In the meantime, two quick checks:

• Verify the download — a truncated/corrupt download is the #1 cause of Etcher errors. The desktop image sha256 is: 63b0019423d2a320aaa5fe58df97db68823b353a30510ffa863fec475904e0ba Check yours: sha256sum on Linux/Mac, or certutil -hashfile <file> SHA256 on Windows. If it doesn't match, re-download. And thanks for the heads up — I'll also double-check on my end that the file on the release didn't get corrupted during upload.
• Card size — the desktop image is ~5.3 GB when written (bigger than the CLI one), so it needs an 8 GB or larger card. A smaller/oddly-sized card makes Etcher fail.

If the checksum matches and the card is 8 GB+ but it still errors, it's most likely Etcher choking on the .xz — try Raspberry Pi Imager (Use custom → pick the .img.xz), Rufus (it writes in DD Image mode and takes the .xz directly), or on Linux just dd: xz -dc aurealnix-opi4a-debian13-v0.2.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress

And if you can, paste the exact Etcher error text — that tells me straight away whether it's a size, decompression, or validation issue. Thanks again for digging in! 🙌

[JamesCL]

Hi, I'm testing your Linux image on an Orange Pi 4B/4A with an eMMC installed and wanted to share the results.

The image correctly detects the eMMC. The kernel recognizes the device as:

mmcblk2: mmc2:0001 ISOCOM 58.3 GiB
Operating mode: HS200

 

image : aurealnix-opi4a-debian13-cli-v0.2.img.xz 

@AurealNix Thank you for your work.

 

Update:

During boot, the kernel reports two reserved-memory warnings:

OF: reserved mem: Reserved memory: failed to reserve memory for node 'sec-sram1@42350000'
OF: reserved mem: Reserved memory: failed to reserve memory for node 'sec-sram2@43000000'

The system remains fully functional. OP-TEE and BL31 reserved-memory nodes are present in the device tree, and eMMC HS200 operation has been tested successfully.

 

root@orangepi-4a:~# uname -a
Linux orangepi-4a 6.18.38-g59eb61929e89 #49 SMP PREEMPT Thu Jul 16 00:46:12 CEST 2026 aarch64 GNU/Linux
root@orangepi-4a:~# free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            3830         330          95           9        3592        3500
Swap:              0           0           0
root@orangepi-4a:~# cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="13"
VERSION="13 (trixie)"
VERSION_CODENAME=trixie
DEBIAN_VERSION_FULL=13.6
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"
root@orangepi-4a:~# lsblk
NAME         MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
mmcblk0      179:0    0  7.4G  0 disk
└─mmcblk0p1  179:1    0  7.4G  0 part /
mmcblk2      179:32   0 58.3G  0 disk
├─mmcblk2p1  179:33   0  1.2G  0 part
└─mmcblk2p2  179:34   0 57.1G  0 part /mnt/emmc-test
mmcblk2boot0 179:64   0    4M  1 disk
mmcblk2boot1 179:96   0    4M  1 disk
root@orangepi-4a:~# fastfetch
        _,met$$$$$gg.          root@orangepi-4a
     ,g$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P.       ----------------
   ,g$$P""       """Y$$.".     OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) aarch64
  ,$$P'              `$$$.     Host: OrangePi 4A
',$$P       ,ggs.     `$$b:    Kernel: Linux 6.18.38-g59eb61929e89
`d$$'     ,$P"'   .    $$$     Uptime: 38 mins
 $$P      d$'     ,    $$P     Packages: 299 (dpkg)
 $$:      $$.   -    ,d$$'     Shell: bash 5.2.37
 $$;      Y$b._   _,d$P'       Terminal: /dev/pts/2
 Y$$.    `.`"Y$$$$P"'          CPU: sun55i-t527 (8) @ 1.80 GHz
 `$$b      "-.__               GPU: Allwinner sun55i-a523-mali [Integrated]
  `Y$$b                        Memory: 331.41 MiB / 3.74 GiB (9%)
   `Y$$.                       Swap: Disabled
     `$$b.                     Disk (/): 744.36 MiB / 7.19 GiB (10%) - ext4
       `Y$$b.                  Disk (/mnt/emmc-test): 24.49 GiB / 55.91 GiB (44%) - ext4
         `"Y$b._               Local IP (eth0): 192.168.7.12/27
             `""""             Locale: en_US.UTF-8



root@orangepi-4a:~#

 

Edited 58 minutes ago by JamesCL
update